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Gustave Le Gray, Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre, ca. 1856-1857. Museum purchase: bequest of Lyra Brown Nickerson, by exchange

Introduction

Early Exposures

19th-Century Photography from the Collection
March 13 - July 19, 2015

Photographic images are ubiquitous in today’s world, but in the 19th century, photography was not only new but awe-inspiring, even magical.

In the early 1800s, several entrepreneurs simultaneously began to test formulas for the best way to create and fix an enduring image on a sensitized surface through the action of light. The daguerreotype, developed by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in association with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, was announced to the public in 1839. The daguerreotype process created unique images, capturing human likenesses—its primary use—with astonishing clarity and precision. The calotype followed, introduced to the public in 1841 by its inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot. The calotype process created characteristically soft images with an uneven tonal quality on paper. Talbot discovered he could develop the latent image after exposure, printing it to make a positive. The potential to create multiples generated even more interest around the medium. For the rest of the century, competition—technological, commercial, and artistic—as well as the demands of public taste transformed photography from a costly and cumbersome novelty into a seductive, ubiquitous medium for documentation and artistic expression.

Recalling debates dating to the Renaissance about the purpose of representation, a divide quickly sprang up between those who valued photography for its hard, linear perfection and those who appreciated its possibility for soft—even manipulated—visual effects. For many, photography’s virtue was its faithful witness, recording the faces of loves ones, faraway places, and events as they unfolded. Others valued photography’s potential for investigations that were as poetic and expressive as painting. The highlights of 19th-century photography on view in this gallery represent the broad array of technical processes and approaches to the medium before 1900.

Selected Objects

American

Button with portrait of a young man, mid 1800s

Conly Studio

Portrait of Cora Nash, late 1800s

W.H. Barstow Studio

Portrait of a woman, mid 1800s

American

Portrait of Isabel Homer Pegram as a young girl, ca. 1850

Leander Baker

Monument Square (Exchange Place), after 1873

Linnaeus Tripe

Tanjore, Great Pagoda, Great Bull as Viewed on Passing through the Last Gopurum, 1860

Felix Bonfils

Rue du Caire—Quartier Toulon 71, ca. 1870s

American

Portrait of a deceased child, mid 1800s

Roger Fenton

Still Life, 1860-1862

British

Alpine Landscape with Figures, ca. 1860

Gustave Le Gray

Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre, ca. 1856-1857

American

Portrait of a man, mid 1800s

David Octavius Hill

Elizabeth Rigby (Lady Eastlake), ca. 1845

Anna Atkins

Lastroea Foenisecii, ca. 1854

American

Portrait of a woman, ca. 1860

Thomas Annan

Close, no. 37, High Street, 1877

Antoine-Samuel Adam-Salomon

Self-Portrait, ca. 1865

Adolphe Braun

Fruit Tree Blossoms, ca. 1854

American

Portrait of a sleeping dog, mid 1800s

Leander Baker

Arcade, Providence, ca. 1870s

Gustave de Beaucorps

Algerian Street Scene, ca. 1858-1860

Robert Adamson

Edinburgh Castle from Greyfriars, between 1843-47

Julia Margaret Cameron

Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque, 1868

American

Portrait of Charles Leonard Pendleton, ca. 1861

Adolphe Braun

Zermatt-Schwarzsee Region: Gorner and Breithorn Glacier, ca. 1875

André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri

Portraits of two women, one with top hat, ca. 1860-1865

Adolphe Braun

Saint Nicholas Portal of the St. Martin’s Church, Colmar, 1859

Various artists

Album of portraits, late 1800s

Unknown artist

Group Portrait of Athletes, ca. 1880s

More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Early Exposures : 19th-Century Photography from the Collection

March 13 - July 19, 2015
View Checklist PDF

RISD Museum

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